Urinary calculus is a common disease. The main components of normal urine are crystals and substances. The crystals can be calcium oxalate, calcium phosphate, uric acid, uric acid saline, cystine, xanthine and so on. When the dissolved concentration of crystal is saturation in the urine, it might appear to super-saturation. Then the dissolved crystals will precipitate and result in urinary calculus occurrence.
Traditionally, the urine sediment is used to detect different morphology of sediments. The urine sediment is using an optical microscope to further determine the types of the urinary crystals. The urine sediment is easy to make erroneous judgment cause of stereo structure and irregular shape of the crystals, and different faces of crystals may appear different physical forms. Determination of crystal types always depends on the experiences of the examiner, therefore it has largely humane errors caused different examiner may have different result. Briefly, the irregularly shaped crystals cannot be accurately determined by its appearance alone.
Because of the traditional detecting method is using a microscope to determine the type of the crystals, it takes much time to search the location of the urinary crystals in patients with less amount of crystals. The traditional detecting method might ignore most of urinary crystals because they are translucent. Moreover, the urine includes many substances such as proteins, cells, bacteria, and so on, these substances may interfere the determination. The patients may miss the opportunity for early treatment.
Currently, the urinary calculus detection is conducted by imaging methods, such as X-ray imaging system, urinary system imaging, computed tomography, ultrasound, etc. In addition, the composition of the urinary calculus can not be determined before acquiring the urine calculus.
Clinically, the urinary calculi is easy to recurin patients. It is very important to know the composition of urinary calculus. Furthermore the characterization of urinary calculi is also important for therapy and prevention purpose.
The analysis methods for urinary calculi are numerous, including X-ray imaging, chemical analysis, X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, chromatographic automatic analysis, thermal stress analysis, thin film polarizers microscopy and so on. Currently, the urinary calculus can only be acquired through surgery or from the extracorporeal shock wave procedure. The types of urinary calculus can only be analyzed after acquiring the urinary calculus sample.
Recently, some researches have demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between the composition of the urinary calculus and the type of urinary crystal in the urinary calculus patients. Therefore, the successful and reliable identification of the type of urinary crystal in the patients having urinary calculus plays an important role in the treatment or therapy of urinary calculus.
So far, people still have the problems in detection and analysis of urinary crystals. The traditional urinary crystals detecting method (relying examiner's visual observation under the microscope) is inconvenient and may cause erroneous result, and cannot directly and accurately determine the type the crystals to make therapeutic decisions.
The above visual observation method has its limitation, more importantly, it still cannot accurately and efficiently determine the types of urinary crystal. The present invention can efficiently collect and accurately determine the types of urinary crystals.